Te Ata (2016) was directed by Nathan Frankowski, The film follows the life of a remarkable woman, Te Ata Thompson Fisher of the Chickasaw Nation. It's worth checking Wikipedia to learn about Te Ata, who was a truly a unique woman.

Q'orianka Kilcher, who portrays Te Ata, is also a remarkable woman. Her father is of indigenous Peruvian descent. She spent many years in Hawaii, and she has absorbed the indigenous Hawaiian culture as well.

The film is historically accurate. The Chickasaw nation was unwillingly forced to become part of the state of Oklahoma. In the early 20th Century, prejudice against Native Americans was as strong in Oklahoma as it was throughout the United States.

What makes this movie so interesting was that Te Ata rose above these prejudices to present the stories of indigenous people to the rest of the world. She performed in the White House and before the King and Queen of England. She is the type of person whose life cries out for a film biography, and I believe this movie does her justice.

We saw Te Ata at the Rochester's excellent Little Theatre. It was presented as part of the wonderful High Falls Film Festival: Celebrating Women in Film. This movie is both entertaining and important. It will work better in a theatre than on the small screen. However, even on a small screen, it will repay your effort to seek it out and see it.

This is a very professionally and beautifully filmed movie. We saw it recently at the Native American Film Festival in Palm Springs. Very impressed by the high standards of accuracy and artistry required by the Chickasaw Nation, which funded and produced the film. It deserves distribution to mainstream theaters. Even if it were not a true story, it makes for great entertainment, and then it is doubly wonderful that it is a true story!!

The iconic true story of Te Ata, Mary Thompson Fisher, the Chickasaw storyteller and goodwill ambassador for the Indian tribes of the early 1900s is wonderfully and emotionally recreated by Producer Paul Sirmonds and Director Nathan Frankowski.

Te Ata was born into the post-Civil War era at a time when the U.S. Government had withdrawn government funds to and nullified treaties with the Indian tribes of Indian Territory as punishment for fighting on the side of the Confederacy. Te Ata, which means "Bearer of the Morning" was her childhood nickname and one she took as a stage name as she pursued a theatrical career which took her all the way to Broadway in the 1920s.

Though she was achieving success on the outside, an emptiness was growing on the inside. The white man who fell in love with her, Clyde Fisher was another guileless soul. It was he who helped her find her true voice and calling—to be an ambassador of goodwill by telling the stories of her people and the Indian tribes of America. Te Ata's talents led her to perform at the White House for President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom she became great friends. She even entertained the king and queen of England at the behest of the Roosevelts.

Te Ata's story, as well as Clyde's, is one of defeating the prejudices and animosities of the past by successfully finding a new common ground of friendship between the races. Her weapon was entertainment and her arrows were that of humor, wit, song and story. What a much-needed and inspirational example to point our nation out of the quagmire of racial tensions America faces.

Q'orianka Kilcher, of The New World fame, played the lead role with a sincere depth of emotion and strength that had me reaching for the tissues more than once. Gil Birmingham, who played her over-protective father, T.B. Thompson, was blessed by writers, Jeannie Barbour and Esther Luttrell with a golden apple role full of great one-liners and humorous reactions to unfolding events.

Kenneth Wood [email protected]

This is a must see movie. Talented performers and above average direction and production values. A movie that teaches us.

Incredibly well shot, edited, sound production everything. My family enjoyed being a part of this film, and the two year wait was well worth. Amazing movie that displayed the Indian Nation and honered it's great Oklahoma heritage. Te ATA also included some well timed humor and pulled at the heart strings as well.

Story of a famous Chickasaw woman that had to be told in film. A nice short epic of a life that was not too ordinary. Very good indigenous bent during assimilating times.